


Shadowless In Candlelight

by HathorAroha



Category: Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Curse, ambiguous ending, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 20:58:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12566056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HathorAroha/pseuds/HathorAroha
Summary: Cogsworth meets young Prince Adam in the hallway, and there is something in this meeting that is...unsettling. Off. Not quite right.





	Shadowless In Candlelight

It is four in the morning and Cogsworth cannot sleep, having awoken from a rather nice dream to see it still very dark. He tosses and turns in his sheets desperately trying to get back to sleep, to drift off one way or another. He needs to get up before the dawn, and his sleep is very important.

Cogsworth tries, oh he tries, and he eventually just has to give up when sleep will not come. He pushes the blankets off himself as he reaches out with another hand, finds the pocketwatch on his side table, gleaming in the moonlight, checks the time.

 _So much for a night’s rest,_ he thinks,  _Maybe a read will do me well._

And so, with a lit candlestick in hand and a coat wrapped around his shoulders, he tiptoes out into the servants’ common area, so quiet at this time of morning. His candle light falls over the room, washing everything in an amber glow. The fireplace has dwindled down to a few faint orange coals. He sees what looks like someone crouched in a chair, but he knows it’s just cushions stacked up so. Come the dawn, he’d see a whole pile of ordinary cushions dumped on the one chair. He can see a couple doors ajar—Plumette’s and Lumiere’s—and he’s pretty certain they’re off elsewhere in the castle in an intimate embrace in some secret corner of their own.

The candle wavers in his hand, with his movement, as he ambles over to a bookcase—the servants had their own little sections on their bookcase. There was Chapeau’s area, his own area, Mrs Potts’, and even Lumiere and Plumette had their own (although all together, their collection came to a total of three.)

He runs his fingers over the dusty spines and the embossed writing, thumb tracing over the words as he trails his hand over his beloved tomes. History and geography and the like, all his favourite topics. What should he read to let him drift to sleep? Would the lone candle flame be enough light to see by? His eyes were not as they used to be.

_Perhaps a walk will do me well instead._

Pulling his old coat tighter around his shoulders, the candlestick in one hand, he carefully makes his way out of the common area, taking care not to make a noise as he leaves. He is on the opposite side of the castle from the Master’s quarters, and surely he sleeps, but Cogsworth tries to muffle his footsteps nevertheless.

 _It’s the boy we’re worried about,_ he remembers,  _and his father even more so._

They had to leave him be, least they lose their jobs at the castle. If they so much as looked over at him, the father would know. He’d just  _know_ , as if he were omniscient. He wasn’t, but still safe not to do anything at all. Not even to pop their head into the boy’s room and check on his fever, for he had been laid low with one the last few days.

_He’ll pull through, he always does, he’s strong of health._

Cogsworth stops short in the middle of the hallway, candle flame guttering, hairs on the back of his neck prickling. He shivers, and he looks over at the wall to check if a window is open. But this is a corridor with no windows to the outside world. Instead, it is lit by candles burning low, spilling weak, wildly flickering pools of light over walls and floor. He hears a  _drip_ of candle wax against the floor, the candle itself coughing out one more sputter and it is dead. His own candle still lives, even as wax is already trailing down like thick tears.

He looks around, he sees nothing out of the ordinary, except the one candle now gone out, wispy smoke still trailing up to the ceiling. He trains his eyes on it, the smoke nearly hypnotic in the way it snakes up to the dark ceiling.

Thinking nothing of it, he pulls his coat tighter, buttons up a bit more, lest he shiver again. His shadow pools and swirls and stretches around his feet as he strolls down the corridors, hoping a little walk would help him find slumber.

The early hours of morning makes Cogsworth’s steps echo, reverberate as though another pair of feet copied his pace. When he stops under a patch of shivering candlelight, his footsteps continue to echo behind him, like the past whispering the path he had trod in this small hour of night. He tugs his coat tighter around his shoulders, and hears another candle gasp in a sudden cold snap of air. Another candle blown out, grey smoke trailing into the dark.  And when he turns around, he finds he is not alone. For, much to his surprise, there stands the boy prince himself, still clad in his nightclothes.

“Good morning, Prince Adam,” Cogsworth greets him, “Shouldn’t you be in bed, resting?”

Blue eyes with pinprick pupils fix themselves on Cogsworth.

“I am.”

“You’re sleepwalking?”

“No.”

“But you’re not in bed, Prince Adam.”

The boy is stock still, at the edge of the candlelight, in between pools of amber. “I’m in bed.”

Cogsworth sighs—he has no time for this. He resists the urge to step forward and grab the boy’s hand, to take him back to his room, where he  _ought_ to be resting from his fever. He, ordinarily, would have, but the boy had become so cold toward them he knew this would not be accepted.

“Come on, I’ll take you back to your room.”

The boy doesn’t move an inch. “I’m there.”

 “It’s four in the morning, I have no time for this.”

“Don’t take me back.”

Is Cogsworth’s hearing going or does he hear a hitch of fear in the boy’s voice? But the boy’s expression remains as neutral as ever, his mouth barely twitching, unblinking eyes still not wavering from Cogsworth’s.

“I don’t want to come back.”

Cogsworth opens his mouth automatically to correct his grammar, but quickly thinks better of it.

“You don’t want to be tired in the morning—rest is very important.”

“Then why are  _you_ up?”

Cogsworth shrugs. “I couldn’t sleep.”

“I can’t either.”

Someone must have left a door open behind him, with all its windows flung wide open. Was it always this cold in the hallways? Maybe it was the time of night that did it. He wishes he had brought his thicker coat with him on his wanderings. Even with his admittedly  _very_ warm, woollen grey coat on, it feels like winter still digs into his bones, even in the mid-autumn.

“I can walk you to your room if—”

“I have no desire to come back.”

Cogsworth can’t quite put his finger on it, but there’s something about his words that unsettles him. He hates things that unsettle him, suggest the world is in some disorder. He wants order, he wants nice, neat, parcelled answers and concise explanations.

“Don’t take me back.”

The older man stares back at the boy, taking in his stiff posture, arms at sides, his eyes unblinking, and he wonders in the back of his mind if he ought to have had a shadow. Cogsworth’s shadow is flung over the wall next to him by the candlelight on the opposite wall, but the boy’s is nowhere to be seen. Perhaps Cogsworth is just imagining things, thinking the boy without a shadow—that was preposterous, the very idea of it threatened disorder in his world.

“I want to go,” the boy’s voice drops to a whisper, “Somewhere warm again.”

Cogsworth frowns at this. “Has no one tended the fireplace in your room?”

“No one.”

Cogsworth remembers the still-burning coals in the servants’ common room.

“Not even a burning coal?”

“Not one.”

He shivers again. Really, what fool had let the cold come creeping in here? He made a mental note to track down whoever it was in the morning, once he had a proper rest.

Besides, he could use a fire too.

“Hmph,” Cogsworth vigorously rubs his hands together, starts marching past the boy, gesturing for him to follow. “There’s a little warmth left in the servants’ common area. Ordinarily I wouldn’t allow it—”

“I want to see it again.”

Cogsworth stops in his tracks, turns around, stares at the boy in head-scratching befuddlement.

“But why? It’s just a little common area. Nothing of any importance.”

“Take me there, but not  _there._ ”

“Not your room.” Cogsworth swings back to face the direction of the servants’ quarters. “Follow me, but keep it quiet.”

* * *

 The servants’ sitting area is as eerily quiet as before, Lumiere’s and Plumette’s doors still standing ajar. His single candle splutters in the chill, but stays lit. Cogsworth waves his hand out at the couches.

“Take a seat. There’s blankets behind that sofa. It’s cold.”

“I’m not cold.”

Cogsworth stares, rubbing his arms vigorously, feeling goosebumps scratching against the fabric of his nightclothes.

“You’re  _not cold_? I’m frozen!”

Shaking his head, the man shuffles over to reignite the fire, only to find the coals black and cold.

“Looks like the cold’s snuffed out the last coal,” Cogsworth remarks, “So much for that.”

He turns around again, expecting to find the boy wrapped in blankets on the couch. Instead, Adam is at the bookcase, perusing the available tomes on its shelves.

“Good idea,” Cogsworth approves, going over behind a sofa to grab a blanket, “Books can help you fall asleep.”

The boy doesn’t acknowledge Cogsworth, as if he never heard him, or just chose to ignore him. With how aloof he had been to the servants for at least the last couple years, the man wasn’t surprised in the least.

“Well, if you need a candle,” Cogsworth raises his candle up a little, “You can have mine. I’ll go back to my warm bed and you read what you like until you’re ready to sleep.”

But before he can amble off, blanket in arms, Plumette and Lumiere’s voices drift down the hallway into the open door. Cogsworth bites back a sigh—they would wake everyone in the castle with all that laughing and declarations of love. He glances at Adam—he still peruses the bookcase, as though he never noticed anything happening behind him.

“Keep it down!” Cogsworth tells the couple as they come sailing in, “You’ll wake everyone!”

The couple stops short, stumbling to a halt in the doorway, their laughter and smiles cut short. Their eyes stare from Cogsworth, to the bookcase, then back to the elder again. Plumette’s hand loosens on Lumiere’s, while the latter stands stock still, his face becoming several shades paler.

“What’s wrong now?” Cogsworth demands, “And where  _were_ you?”

It’s Plumette who manages to speak after several seconds of silence.

“We were checking on the prince a minute ago. We just wanted to see if he was still alright.”

Cogsworth, despite himself, can’t help but feel warmed by Plumette’s concern for the prince even if he had grown cold toward them. It wasn’t that they’d stopped  _caring_ about him; they just had to pretend they didn’t, for the sake of their careers.

“And?”

“He was  _asleep,_  Cogsworth, and here he is, still, in the same moment!”

“Perhaps you had checked on him ten minutes ago? Five?”

“No, we came straight here,” Plumette insists, still looking shaken, “How can he be here too?”

“I—I don’t know,” Cogsworth admits, and stares back at the prince, and realises for the first time he can see books through him.

“ _Sacre bleu,_ it’s  _freezing_  in here.”

Then it clicks. It clicks so hard in Cogsworth’s brain that the man lets his blanket fall back to the floor, the same hand now gripping the back of the sofa. His candle flutters with his movement.

“It can’t be. I’ve never believed in such nonsense.”

His missing shadow. His pinprick pupils despite the darkness. His wide, unblinking eyes like glass. His stiff posture. His strange grammar when he had told him “he didn’t want to go back”. The absolute frigidity of the room and the hall.

Cogsworth swallows, hard. He has never seen Lumiere look so pale before, his hand white as he clutches on to Plumette’s for his life. Plumette, in contrast, looks, while shocked, a good bit calmer than her beloved. Much as Lumiere annoys him, often on an hour to hour basis, Cogsworth is concerned for the man’s state.

“Plumette, get Lumiere to a sofa for God’s sake, before he passes out on us.”

“Cogsworth, I  _never_ pass out.” Lumiere protests, but it is weak, uncommitted.

 “Just get to a sofa,” Cogsworth turns now to the prince—the  _ghost_ of the prince—and sees he has turned around to watch in silence as they all took seats on one sofa, Lumiere in between himself and Plumette.  “You’re not real, are you?”

The prince turns, sharp, to them. “I’m not coming back again.”

“What?” Lumiere and Plumette say at the same time.

“I want to go see her.”

Cogsworth leans over to murmur to Lumiere and Plumette a quick commentary.

“He has told me as such before.”

“Before?” Lumiere echoes. His eyes will not stray from the prince.

“I met him in the hall a few minutes before.”

“And yet we’d seen him in his bed—“ Plumette gasps, a hand flies to her mouth, slowly turning her head to stare at Lumiere. “Oh, Lumiere, what if—”

“ _No._  No, it can’t be—”

“So  _now_ you would mourn my passing.”

“What?” Plumette’s voice shakes, she clings on tighter to Lumiere’s arm, “What do you mean?”

The ghost’s hands tighten into fists. Is it Cogsworth’s imagination, or does the cold suddenly seem less frigid now?

“You stopped caring.”

“Never!”

“Never? You abandoned me.” He doesn’t sound so much angry to Cogsworth as…deeply and bitterly disappointed.

“We didn’t—” Plumette begins, but is interrupted again.

“You did.”

Cogsworth clears his throat, “We—we didn’t want to risk our careers at the castle—”

“So I’m less important than a servant’s job.”

“No!” Cogsworth can feel Lumiere’s and Plumette’s eyes on him as he tries to scramble for a better way to put it. “Don’t be preposterous—you are important.”

“But not enough.”

“It’s…complicated.”

“It’s not.”

“Your father—” Lumiere begins, but is interrupted.

“The castle is a huge place. He isn’t all-knowing.”

“We had to follow rules.” Cogsworth explains.

Plumette sighs, shrugs helplessly. “What else could we have done?”

“A smile. A word. A note passed on surreptitiously. I thought love was stronger than fear. That’s what mother always said.”

“We’re just servants.” Plumette whispers.

“I know better now. Fear is stronger than love.”

Lumiere looks alarmed at this. “No, prince, it isn’t.”

“Then why did you abandon me to my father if not out of love?”

Cogsworth can feel it again in his head, that same explanation,  _our careers are at stake. We need a living._ He cannot, will not, bring himself to say it again. He tries to scramble for another explanation, something that would convince the prince—he doesn’t want him to  _die_ —and his brain refuses to come up with anything else.

“I’d trusted in you. Mother had trusted you.”

“You can still trust us to be here,” Plumette says, “We’re not leaving the castle.”

“The castle. But you had no compunctions about leaving me to my father’s will.”

“We most certainly did not,” Cogsworth protests, starting to stand up, but Lumiere pulls him back down, “We were against your father from the start.”

“How do I know this?”

“We—we did not agree to his method of…discipline.” Cogsworth hates, hates,  _hates_ the sound of a hand slapping a boy’s face.

“Yet you said nothing to assure me you were still there.”

“We cannot go against a ruler,” Plumette says, “We cannot  _make_ him change his ways.”

“I know. And yet no assurance out of his sight or hearing? I heard silence.”

“Silence doesn’t mean we  _like_ what he’s doing,” Lumiere says.

“How would I have known? Silence never speaks well.”

“Sometimes it was safer to be silent,” Plumette tries to explain, “Especially in his presence.”

“He had schedules, he was sometimes out of the province, and yet. Silence. Nothing. As if I never existed.”

“He could have known sooner or later.”

“So all it took was my father to take rulership to show your true loyalties.”

“We are loyal out of necess—”

“See!” the ghost points at Cogsworth, “Out of necessity were you loyal to me. And you used my trust!”

“Wait—”

“At least  _you_ have the strength to say the truth, Cogsworth—”

“I wasn’t fini—”

“It was  _out of necessity_ , you said so yourself!”

“He means to your father, my prince,” Lumiere assuages, “We—”

“I reached out to you when I needed help.”

“Your father ordered us not to—”

“Not to help. You were very willing.”

“We weren’t—”

The ghost offers a harsh laugh, grating. “From day one, you bowed under my father’s commands. Why?”

“We had to.” Cogsworth pleads their case.

“Even out of sight and out of mind?” He turns now to address Lumiere. “You and Plumette bend the rules all the time, and yet have to be caught breaking them.”

“This is different.” Plumette says.

“So it’s different for me?”

“You are the prince.”

“A prince shouldn’t be alone. And yet he is in a castle of people. You see why I cannot return?”

“Cannot return?” Lumiere repeats, “But you must!”

“I want to go where I know I will be loved.”

All the air seems to go out of Lumiere—Cogsworth is sure this is the first time he’s ever seen him so deflated, like a man who just learned of the loss of a dearly beloved family member. He didn’t find it so far-fetched, knowing Lumiere had seen the prince like a younger brother who trailed him everywhere once upon a time. The brother Lumiere had always wished he’d had, for he had only ever had sisters.

“But…my prince, you are loved.”

"We can do better, I’m sure of it,” Plumette adds, eyes and voice pleading, “Undo what’s done, and bring back the light.”

“Suit the action to the word, the word to the action,” the ghost smiles, but it is empty, devoid of any feeling. “Goodnight, sweet prince.”

And, in less than the blink of an eye, the ghost disappears, leaving nothing but an empty room, as though he had never been there at all. The flame on the candle on the table flutters, sputters, and goes out, smoke curling to the moonlight-soaked ceiling.

“No…” Lumiere whispers in the dark.

Cogsworth is about to put a hand on his shoulder, offering some form of consolance, when the man leaps to his feet, surprising himself and Plumette.

“Lumiere?” Cogsworth and Plumette enquire at the same time.

They stare as the man runs out of the door, and both instinctively know where he is headed.

“Should we go after him?” Cogsworth wonders.

Plumette is already heading for the door on fleet feet.

* * *

Lumiere doesn’t care how fast he’s going as he runs down the candlelit hallways and servants’ corridors. His lungs cry out for air as he hares toward the west wing, his thoughts scrambling to keep up with the rest of him. He swipes at his eyes with a hand, impatiently, even though he knows it would barely make a difference to how much he can see in the light of candles and the moon outside. He feels like it takes forever to get to the west wing, to find the boy prince, to see if he still lived. At one point, he stops to try and ease deeper breaths into his lungs, and it takes him a second to realise he was in the perfect spot where the moon and a candlelight threw twin shadows of him over the floor. He looks away, trying not to think of how he had always affectionately called the boy his “second shadow” when he’d been four or five or so.

Finally, he reaches the closed door to the west wing, and, with a great effort, he pulls the door open, blinking against the bright candlelight inside, peering around, heart in throat. He looks around for a candle, and grabs the nearest available one before he approaches the prince’s bed. The prince is no longer on his side, but on his back. He can’t tell if he breathes, even as he tiptoes closer to the prince’s bed. When he is close enough, he holds the candle up higher, more forward, so it catches Adam’s features. The candle flutters as Lumiere’s hand tightens upon it on seeing that the prince’s startling blue eyes are open, staring up at the ceiling. The servant forces himself to breathe, to speak.

“My prince?”


End file.
